Life
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. After leaving school he worked for two years at the Dorland advertising agency until 1938 when he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu and took part in what was known as the 'Grain Race' from Australia to Europe by way of Cape Horn. This voyage was subsequently described under the misleading title The Last Grain Race and pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes. In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
He served in the Black Watch and the Special Boat Section during World War Two, and was captured during an operation against the coast of Sicily in August 1942. He was later awarded the Military Cross for his part in the raid. Newby was sent to a camp at Chieti a few miles inland from Pescara on the Adriatic coast, and later to Fontanellato, near Parma. Escaping with the other British prisoners after the Italian Armistice he was helped to hide in the Apennine countryside by a Slovenian woman, Wanda, who married him after the war and became a companion on his travels. These experiences were described in his memoir Love and War in the Apennines, which focusses on how he was helped by ordinary Italians. A film, In Love and War, was made in 2001 based on the book, starring Callum Blue as Newby. He was free until the end of 1943, when he was recaptured.
After the war, he briefly worked in the women's fashion business (his father had owned a firm making ladies' mantles), before setting out to climb Mir Samir in the Nuristan Mountains of Afghanistan, an expedition later chronicled in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush — probably his most widely-known work, and which included a meeting with Wilfred Thesiger. From 1963 to 1973, Newby was Travel Editor for The Observer newspaper.
He was awarded a CBE in 1994 and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers in 2001.
Newby's life and work was profiled in ITV's The South Bank Show (director Tony Knox) in 1994. He also made notable travel films for the BBC, returning to Parma with his wife Wanda in The Travel Show (director Paul Coueslant, 1994) and visiting one of his favourite cities, Istanbul (1996).
Newby died at age 86 in Guildford.
Read more about this topic: Eric Newby
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“That man is to be pitied who cannot enjoy social intercourse without eating and drinking. The lowest orders, it is true, cannot imagine a cheerful assembly without the attractions of the table, and this reflection alone should induce all who aim at intellectual culture to endeavor to avoid placing the choicest phases of social life on such a basis.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 6:25.26.
Jesus.
“The American father ... is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)